Exchange with a Democratic Friend

Thanks for weighing in on the CBS memos and pointing out (aside from the controversy) how much our expectations about aesthetics have changed. The Substance of Style continues to show you were writing about something genuinely profound. I still think about it all the time. You know you've hit a real subject when it shows up in so many different and completely unrelated contexts.

Yep. I read a lot about typefaces when I was researching TSOS. I wrote a bunch, too, but left 90% on the cutting room floor.

As to the memos, I honestly have no idea who to believe. But there certainly is a sound case against them. I looked at the .pdf of the memo, itself, and something I haven't seen mentioned came to mind. It's got a lot of little dots on it, as if it had been copied many times over, or something. This is fairly typical copy-degrading, I think.

But wasn't this supposed to have been "newly discovered" because it had been in Killian's personal files all these years and has only just now come to light? Doesn't that suggest the memos would have been originals, or have been touched infrequently, if at all? Maybe it is a carbon copy, and that would explain the dots. But I could certainly see someone thinking they were making it look older by copying copies of copies of it.

Another friend mentioned this as well. You're both smart and not big Bush promoters, so maybe I should actually make the point.

I think the memos are big fakes. I also think that Bush got special treatment, probably without anyone having to ask for it. Given his family's connections and the way Texas operates like a small town, people would have looked out for him.

My Democratic friend's reply to my response makes an important point that, judging from some of my email, is getting lost in the partisanship of this discussion:

I think you're right on - the memos are Big Fakes AND Bush is a Child of Privilege. We have such a hard time accepting the Certsian Philosophy. Yes, it's a breath mint, and yes, it's a candy mint. It's two, two, two mints in one. Much of life is Certsian, but we so love our fights that we'll gin them up if we have to. It's a candy mint, damnit!

The reason this story doesn't resonate with me is that it doesn't do anything more than reiterate the obvious. Of COURSE Bush got political help in getting into the reserves and -- most likely -- took advantage of his privilege to avoid some of his duties. I don't even think Bush's biggest supporters actually believe otherwise. They generally just focus on micro-points, like whether he was honorably discharged (check) or actually put in flying time (check) or such. His spokespeople have done a brilliant job in the Ben Barnes debate by asserting time and time and time again that Bush's father NEVER EVER asked Barnes to get his son into the reserves. Which Barnes, himself never says; instead, Barnes tells what I think is probably the truth (which is, itself, never refuted by the White House) that a family friend was the one who did the asking. And the White House responds with its own micro-truth -- George HW Bush NEVER asked Ben Barnes for such a thing. And the media just completely ignore the fact that what Barnes is saying and what the White House is denying are not contradictory.

So much of these peripheral debates now are about micro-points like this: Where, exactly, was Kerry on Christmas Eve (latitude and longitude, if possible)? Was he throwing medals or ribbons? Proportional spacing is one thing, but what about the kerning? This, if you'll remember, is how OJ won his criminal trial, too -- by atomizing the relevant arguments into obscurity. We'll lay out dots of truth for you to follow. Ignore that big picture over there, please. It's misdirection taken to a level that a magician would envy.

And what it all comes down to is a Seinfeldean nothing. I so hope the Kerry campaign isn't behind all of this. It would be such a waste.